MP3 playback distortion? Limits on bitrate?

I don't know if this is related or not, but I've gotten some static out of my speakers when the game plays some of its own music. When the Drengin first introduced themselves to me, for example, there were little bursts of static or distortion or something as it was playing. There was one other track I noticed that did this, though I don't recall what. Has anyone else experienced this?

~SDC~

Can you play the files ok in WMP? We use the same directshow filter to play mp3s. Anything up to 160kbps(at the least) should be fine.

Also could you paste the date/time on your l3codecx.ax & l3codeca.acm in your Windows system dir?

l3codecx.ax 12-12-2002 00:14:32
l3codeca.acm 03-03-2001 02:36:48
L3codecp.acm 28-05-1999 15:13:34

The distortion you mention Ardrikk sounds a bit like what I hear on these mp3 too, but it doesn't happen with the Galciv music for me.
The 'high bitrate' files I mentioned are well over 160kbps (192 or 320 even)
These files do play fine in MPlayer or Winamp. I do have an example mp3 that has this effect which I could be able to share with you for testing but it's 8.3 Mb so I can't email it to you. Obviously you would also be kindly requested to delete it after testing

~SDC~

Do you devs want such an MP3 to test with the game? Just let me know and where I can upload it. (right now I just use winamp to play mp3 during the game. Works quite well :))

~SDC~

Okay, Furan.

I tried playing just about all of GalCiv's music from my desktop, using Winamp and every one of them played perfectly. No static or distortion through my speakers.
Oops, just noticed you said Windows Media Player, not Winamp. Okay, tried playing the trouble track through that and I could hear just a bit of the static/distortion that I hear in the game. It's much harder to hear, but it is there faintly in WMP as well.

Here are the files time/date stamps you requested from my system as well:

l3codecx.ax Thursday, December 12, 2002 12:14:32 AM
l3codeca.acm Friday, March 02, 2001 9:36:48 PM
l3codecp.acm Friday, May 28, 1999 10:13:34 AM

Any thoughts or ideas?

~SDC~

Just to chime in, I'm having the same problem with my MP3's. Most all of mine are encoded high-VBR so they range from 32-320 Kbps from second-to-second.


03/02/2001 08:36 PM 300,544 L3codeca.acm
05/28/1999 09:13 AM 301,568 L3CODECP.ACM
12/12/2002 12:14 AM 83,456 l3codecx.ax

Looks like more or less the smae one as the other two guys here. I know for a fact these files came from the Nimo Codec Pack as I had uninstalled it during troubleshooting and was not able to play these MP3's at all in WMP (still able to in Winamp, guess it has its own decoder). I reinstalled the codec pack to get the audio back, so there you go.

I've done a bit of searching for older versions of these files but to no avail. Does anyone know where you can get the set that windows came with originally? (I think I've seen a WMP Codec pack from MS floating around but it's been a while).

Little more searching dug up a site that claimed the l3codeca.acm bundled into MediaJukebox 5 (now up to 8) passed all of their VBR tests for decoding. I d/l'ed 8 and installed and got this l3codeca.acm out of it:

03/02/2001 07:46 PM 290,816 l3codeca.acm

It may be a hair better though I wouldn't swear to it. Otherwise the symptoms are the same, a relatively low-volume popping in the background of VBR tracks during heavy bass hits (like bass drum beats). Though comparitively low-volume in relation to the music it is very audible and disturbing. Do you guys have any idea which of the codecs is doing the decoding in GalCiv?

l3codecx.acm - "decode only"
doesn't encode!

The following is from the website http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/decoders_acm.html :

l3codecx.acm - "decode only" - doesn't encode!
l3codeca.acm - "advanced" - decodes all bitrates. Only encodes up to 56kbps.
l3codecp.acm - "professional" - encodes and decodes all bitrates
l3codecx.ax - not acm - Installed by Windows Media Player 6.4

I'm guessing it's not codecp since I don't even have that one on my system. If I knew which of the others was actually used I could try to track down another version of it to try ... Thanks.

Yeah, I noticed that most of my MP3s were playing back with some static and distortion. And I also found that if you're using the game's MP3 Player, your songs cut out whenver you get to a point in the game that plays "special" music; like alien diplomacy screens, for example. Then when you get back to the main screen where the standard background music would normally play, your song starts back up again where it left off. Kind of irritating, actually, to be grooving along to, say, Madonna and suddenly be hearing the Drengin music (which is staticy for me ).

Soooo, I just finally took someone else's suggestion and am running Winamp on my desktop, playing my playlists while I play the game. The game is still playing its music, but if you have Winamp turned all the way up it will totally drown out most all of the game's music so it actually works out okay. Only thing is I've noticed occasionally Winamp's playback will freeze. Though if I click somewhere on the map or click a done button or something it cuts back in....might be some kind of memory issue.

~SDC~

Could you just rename all the MP3 files in the music directory of the game so it won't play it's music? I also get the static for the Drengin music, no other music included with the game seems to be affected so far. I haven't tried playing my own MP3s with the playlist option.

~SDC~